The decision by Senegal to send 2,100 troops to Saudi Arabia may come as a surprise to many. However, this is not the first time that the "jambars" will set foot in the kingdom.
A much smaller contingent was sent to help "protect the holy sites" of Mecca and to honour "the historic ties between the two countries" 24 years ago.
That operation ended tragically with a plane crash that killed 92 Senegalese soldiers.
The latest deployment will join a Saudi-led coalition fighting to secure the kingdom's border with Yemen.
Even so, Senegalese leader Macky Sall is using more or less the same reasons for taking troops to Saudi Arabia used then by former President Abdou Diouf all those years ago.
Except that this time, the rejection is much wider.
It seems that the younger generation of politicians and citizens does not buy the argument of "protecting the holy sites of Islam" being served to them.
"Why would Senegalese troops go to Yemen to fight a war that is not theirs?" is a widely shared view on social media today.
And many did not go far before making the link between President Sall's recent announcement that Saudi Arabia would invest heavily in the government development programme known as Programme Senegal Emergent 2035 (PSE), and the decision to send troops to the kingdom.
A well-known columnist went as far as saying that "the blood of the jambars will be funding the PSE".
Senegal, a majority Sunni Muslim country, is the only non-Arabic country to join the Saudi-led coalition.